Allegories

The Four Seasons are an ancient decorative motif. Usually each season is represented as an allegorical figure bearing traditional iconographic symbols. The Romans typically represented the seasons as voluptuous goddesses known as the Horae. This imagery carried over into neoclassical art and later and became especially popular as garden sculpture. Putti (re-popularized in the Renaissance) became common allegorical figures and often took over the role of the Horae, as here. This change in preference may have occurred because putti are more innocuous than the sexualized goddesses of antiquity.